How it Could Have Been
by aceofqueens
Summary: We all know what Shepard was doing between Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3. He surrendered to the Alliance. They detained him for questioning, then the Reapers showed up. But what would have happened if he refused? What if he didn't waste time with their nonsense? What if Shepard decided to use the months of extra time that he had?


Shepard shook his head in disbelief. He couldn't believe what Admiral Steven Hacket just told him.

He had just returned from slamming an asteroid into a mass relay to prevent the Reapers from beginning their "harvest". Sure, the ensuing nova had killed hundreds of thousands of innocents, and Sheppard felt terrible. It was a painfully hollow feeling of guilt in the pit of his stomach. But if Shepard hadn't have done that, the Reapers would have taken the unprepared Galaxy by surprise, and all space-faring life would have been ruthlessly exterminated.

But now Hacket was asking him to turn himself over to the Alliance for a trial. They were going detain him and treat him like a terrorist. _I deserve a damn medal_, Shepard thought.

"Shepard, you're going to have to trust me on this one." Hacket continued. "It's the best way to resolve this."

Now Shepard was infuriated. He couldn't believe that Hacket was asking him to do this when there was still so much work to be done to prepare for the Reapers. Shepard knew he would be a lunatic to do as he was being instructed. They would probably detain him for months until the Reapers arrived. Then he'd have to make a narrow escape from Earth and run around the galaxy doing all sorts of errands to prepare an army, when he could have done all of that stuff before the Reapers arrived.

"That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard come out of someone's mouth." Shepard yelled. "Do you even realize…"

"Watch it soldier! You're speaking to an admiral. Spectre or not, I'll have my men arrest you right now."

Shepard smiled. It was an eerie, scary expression. He leaned in very close to Hacket and boldly said: "I'd like to see them try. Have you forgotten how much this "soldier" has accomplished? I **singlehandedly** fought off an army of hundreds of batarians on Elysium. I annihilated Saren and his forces, winning the battle of the Citadel. Then I came back to life to do the same to the Collectors. I've personally killed more enemies than the number of staff on one of your dreadnoughts. It would be regrettable if I had to add your soldiers to that kill count. But if they would otherwise stop me from saving countless lives, I will gladly live with it."

Hacket swallowed, and it was a deafening noise in the silent medical bay. The Admiral's head was pounding and it felt as if he had been dipped in lava. Sweat was dripping down his face and he looked visibly scared.

"You're making a huge mistake, Shepard," was all he could muster as he slowly backed away to the door. "Alliance HQ, the Council, everyone will hear of this. You'll be vilified."

Shepard found that particularly ironic. So he chuckled a bit. "I really don't care. I'm standing up for what is right. By the time I'm done, it won't matter."

Hacket shook his head and walked to the airlock.

"Shepard." Councilor Anderson spoke as he greeted Shepard on the presidium and gestured for him to take a seat. After the two men sat, Anderson spoke again.

"I heard about the incident with Hacket." Shepard opened his mouth to say something, but closed it when he saw Anderson chuckle and say "But, I approve. That man is incapable of looking at the bigger picture. He's a by-the-books kind of guy who likes to wrap everything in red tape. I'm glad you told him off, he definitely needed to hear it."

"Well, I'm glad to know someone has by back."

"Indeed. And there's no need to worry about anything. I'll make sure you don't catch any flak for this. In fact, I'll keep the Alliance off your back while you do whatever it is you need to do to prepare for the Reapers."

Anderson also added: "Not that you really need my help, since the Normandy is the most advanced ship in the Galaxy and can be completely undetectable."

"That's actually what I wanted to talk to you about. You're familiar with my mission to destroy the Collectors, correct?"

"Yes. The Council knows that you went through the Omega-4 relay to attack the Collector homeworld. Apparently, you were quite successful. That was a very impressive feat. You have quite a knack for doing the impossible.'

Shepard smiled. "Well, I owe it at least in part to my incredible crew. They're really quite amazing."

"I don't doubt it." Anderson said with his own smile. "So I assume you've destroyed their base then?"

"Actually, no. It's quite a long story, but one that you need to hear."

Shepard went on to recount his whole mission with Cerberus, starting from the very beginning. He took special care to explain the details of acquiring the data from the Collector vessel that helped them navigate the relay, and the Reaper IFF. The story ended with the Illusive Man's suggestion to use a timed radiation pulse to eliminate the Collectors, rather than simply destroying the whole station.

Anderson listened with extreme interest, all the way up to the last part. "So you decided to let Cerberus have the base?" Anderson asked angrily.

Shepard was quick to continue. "No. Of course that is what the Illusive man wanted. However, he would have needed the Reaper IFF device to integrate into his ships. So I simply decided not to give it to him. I even told EDI to lock him out of our computers so he couldn't even access our data. She had no problem turning on her creators, since she is now unshackled."

"I suppose even the Illusive Man makes some obvious mistakes every now and then." Anderson commented, nodding to show he approved of Shepard's choice.

"That brings me to three gifts I have for you." To this, Anderson raised his eyebrow.

"I want to hand both the IFF and our data from the Collector vessel ship over to you. That way, you and the Council can integrate them with your ships, just like the Normandy did, and go see the evidence for the Reaper's existence yourselves. There is even a dead human Reaper there you can go see in person.

"Second, I also want to give you DNA evidence that the Collectors are actually repurposed Protheans, meant to be slaves for the Reapers. I found that on their ship as well.

"And finally, I want to give you terabytes upon terabytes of video footage that we took during our mission. After the Council didn't believe my story of talking to Sovereign and Vigil, I decided to have cameras installed in all of my crew's helmets and gear. It turns out in world with faster than light travel such a thing is incredibly easy to do. Anyway, now everyone can see what my crew and I saw in person. We even recorded all my conversations with Harbinger."

Anderson had a look of shock plastered on his face. He slumped back in his chair, and after a tense moment, broke out with a huge grin.

"Shepard, do you know what this means? I…we…finally have the evidence we need to convince the Council of the truth. I've been fighting this battle for two years, and now I've won! There's no way they can deny the Reapers' existence now. It's quite an enormous mountain of evidence. It's much, much more than you had aboard the SR1."

"Yes, and with any luck, it will also convince everyone that I have good intentions and have no loyalty to Cerberus."

Anderson excused himself, as he had a lot of work to do. Shepard, of course, was in a similar situation.

Shepard's next stop was to go to the Quarian flotilla. He decided it was wise to broker a peace between the Quarians and Geth immediately, rather than waiting until the Quarians did something stupid like starting a war after the Reapers invaded.

Of course, the process was somewhat stressful. It was understandably difficult for the Quarians to accept that the true Geth, unlike the Heretics, did not worship the Reapers, had no hostility for them, and wanted to work together.

During the negotiations, Shepard was worried that he wouldn't be successful. Unfortunately, he had no way of knowing that if he had waited until the Reapers attacked, the Quarians and Geth would have reached peace with his help anyway. This would have been minutes after fighting a massive war with each other and during the Reaper war as well.

So, since none of these stressful conditions were present, it was even easier to broker peace now. It also didn't hurt that the admirals had already met Legion (who proved to be invaluable) during Tali's trial. It was a good thing Shepard had decided to bring him.

So within a week, Quarians were landing on Rannoch and building an alliance with the Geth.

Meanwhile, since the Council pretty much had to finally admit Shepard was right, all sorts of scientists and experts across the Galaxy had been combing through Prothean ruins in an organized effort to discover something to use against the Reapers.

Thus, it was inevitable something that had been dubbed "The Crucible" would be discovered. Liara immediately heard about it from her Shadow Broker network and got her hands on the data. She discovered it was a super weapon, so after she met with the Council and showed it to them, construction began immediately.

Nobody could have known that the Crucible would be discovered anyway during the Reaper War, and that it would have been built in only 3 months, in secret, and while the Galaxy fought Reapers. So it took much less time to build it because there was no war being fought and it didn't need to be secret.

The asari councilor of course told everyone about the Prothean VI she had been hiding all along, so they could get information from it that might help with the Crucible. This only helped even more to prove the Reapers really existed (not that they needed more proof). It was discovered that the Citadel was the Catalyst, so it was hooked up to the Citadel right after construction finished.

The Galaxy was just waiting for the Reapers to arrive so they could activate it.

_Months Later_

Harbinger soared through space, at the front of a swarm of more than 200,000 Reapers. It had meticulously planned this Cycle down to the smallest detail. If it was capable of emotion, it would have felt an immense sense of smugness and superiority. It would extinguish the lives of these pathetic mortals who were no more than bugs before its god-like intelligence and might. If it had a mouth, it would have grinned wickedly.

The mortals would detect their presence, of course, but the Reapers would strike hard and fast. They would head straight for Earth, except for a small number of them that would get the Batarians out of the way before hand.

Harbinger believed this cycle would be no harder than the countless others. How could the untied races resist them?

What Harbinger hadn't counted on was Shepard not being a complete idiot.

It had been decided that Shepard should have the honor of activating the Crucible. So a little bit of quantum entanglement technology like the kind that allowed the Illusive Man to contact Shepard during the mission to destroy the Collectors, a remote "detonator" was linked to the Normandy. All Shepard had to do was press a button. The quantum particles would transmit to the Citadel control room and activate the Crucible remotely.

When the reports that Luna base had been attacked reached Alliance Headquarters, instead of being shocked, everyone knew what do to. Joker flew the Normandy close enough to contact the Reapers. Of course, they connected him to Harbinger.

Harbinger appeared on the Normandy's vid screens. "Shepard. You are arrogant. You think you can defeat us?"

Shepard smirked. "Yeah, I do actually."

"You fight against inevitability, like dust struggling against cosmic winds. You resist, but you will fail. We are your destiny, the pinnacle of evolution. You have existed because we allowed it, and now you will end because we demand it. We will impose order on the chaos that is organic evolution. The forces of the universe bend to me, Shepard. I am the Vanguard of your destruction."

Shepard, and all of the Normandy crew started laughing madly.

"You organics are foolish indeed to by amused by your own destruction. You…"

Shepard decided to cut Harbinger off right there. He had been thinking up one-liners ever since the Crucible was completed about a month before the Reapers showed up.

"We're not laughing at our destruction, we're laughing at yours."

And with that, Shepard slammed the button on the holographic interface of his computer. Then he quickly stood at attention, and gave a formal military salute to the Reaper he had just emasculated in front of the entire Galaxy, who had been watching via broadcast.

Before Harbinger could respond, Joker cut the channel to prevent Harbinger from getting the last word. EDI added her personal touch, which was broadcasting the troll song to the Reapers. She also arranged for them to see a troll face drawing with the words "u mad, bro?" instead of the interior of the Normandy after the feed was cut. Then, the Normandy engaged FTL to escape before the Reapers could come to bear with their lasers.

As the red wave of energy cascaded over the Galaxy, people everywhere popped corks off of champagne bottles and cheered at the Reaper's defeat.

Author's Notes:

So that my friends, is the tale of what Shepard should have been doing in between ME2 and ME3, and how the laughably easily the Reapers could have been defeated with only the loss of Luna base and the batarians (but seriously who cares about them? Good riddance).

I'm aware that if this happened there wouldn't have been Mass Effect 3. It was a wonderful game and I loved it very, very much. In fact, it's one of the 5 best games I've ever played.

I was always bothered by the problems I pointed out in this story. Shepard had a mountain of evidence he/she finally could have shown, but he/she seems to have just forgotten about it. The helmet camera thing is just an extra touch. It's the first thing I would have done, were I Shepard.

I'm glad Bioware didn't end Mass Effect 2 this way, but seriously, they could have come up with better excuses/explanations as to why they simply can't do what I've done here.

The Mass Effect series is wonderful. This story is meant to be a funny parody, nothing more. I hope you enjoyed it.


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